How three different educators are going beyond basic flips with innovative strategies

Often thought of as an instructional method whereby students watch online instructional videos at home and come to class prepared to do “homework,” Flipped Learning has come a long way since its origins in 2007. The concept has since evolved to include myriad instructional methods that take the basic concept and go further in method to turn traditional higher educational learning models on their heads.

“Professors are starting out with basic classroom ‘flips,’ and then moving into deeper learning pedagogies,” said Jon Bergmann, chief learning officer at FlippedClass.com and a pioneer of the innovative teaching concept, “including deeper project-based learning and flipped mastery models (i.e., where students prove that they learned a specific concept and then independently move onto a new module).”

While Bergmann still sees the original “view video at home, do homework in class” model as a good starting point for new Flipped Learning adopters, he says educators are helping students interact with those videos and gain understanding from them. “It’s not just about assigning a video and hoping that the class watches it,” says Bergmann. “It’s about getting to the next level and truly engaging students in class, and in a way that positively impacts the learning experience.”

Here’s how three different professors have used Flipped Learning to achieve that goal: